A response to this: "What were the five most important video games to you throughout your youth/teen years? No curating to look cool/interesting please"

1. Lagoon (SNES)
Comment: The first RPG I played. The environments and sense of world-building were a lot deeper than the other games I was familiar with, so it was easy to get really invested. The ultra-small hitboxes and the lack of user-friendliness I wrote off as "the game is hard" not "the game is flawed", so I spent effort getting better at the action mechanic. Nowadays the time I spend on Lagoon is part nostalgia, part meme-ery. It affected the ways I perceive other games then and today and led into ARPGs like Souls.

I've been maintaining a fan site for Lagoon for 13 years.

2. Speedway Classic (Apple II)
Comment: The game had this really cool looking 3D effect and a memorable intro. It was my go-to game on this platform narrowly beating out Lemonade Stand. Since I coded on this platform it was helpful to see the connection from code --> possible program.

3. Final Fantasy 3 or 6 (SNES)
Comment: This is a very normie pick. You know I'm taking the no-curating seriously.

This game for me is tied up with a) interest in video game characters, since before that I didn't play many heavily character-based games) first experiences in PC usage when trying to get more content for it.

I first played it around 1995 and wanted more content about it (besides a magazine article) but it was hard to find any. I didn't have a lot of experience using PCs or the internet but it was worth a try.

The best time was when my parents took me to a computer exhibit at the <city name> Science Center, they had a bunch of computers hooked up with internet access. It was a bit rough at the start because it was not like the Apple IIc (at home) or the IIe (at school) and the GUI/mouse/internet browser was a lot different, from what I recall the demo machines were Windows 95 with Netscape Navigator. But I got to use it to find a lot of cool things- secrets, strategies and so on.

4. Dynasty Warriors 4 (PS2)
Comment: This was when I was a teenager. Since I was under a lot of stress in high school, overbooked with way too many clubs + part time job, it was a good de-stresser.

5. Tekken 2 (Arcade)
Comment: Noise, dirty floors, cigarette smoke, frantically pushing the button + kicking the machine to un-jam your quarter. There were a couple dive-y arcades I used to go to. I used to always play as Angel on 2, Yoshimitsu on others, and got decent at those but didn't know any other moveset. Nowadays I can do some combos with Paul.

Honorable mention: Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise, a point-and-click game for kids. The game is just so weird yet full of cool things. First seen at my daycare. I later got the CD from somewhere when I was in high school because I was nostalgic then too.